The IPA in the Humanitarian Field and Migrants and Refugees committees were established in 2018 through the vision of the IPA President Virginia Ungar.

She had the foresight to realise that the ever-increasing traumas derived from natural disasters, conflicts and community violence, and the resultant displacement of populations, showed that psychoanalysts who were working within these vital areas required recognition and support, and a place where their work could be more widely disseminated to colleagues. In addition, there needed to be encouragement for more psychoanalysts to get involved in these fields.

The IPA in the Humanitarian Field Committee includes the Migrants and Refugees subcommittee and the IPA and the United Nations committee.

To maximise and further disseminate the inspiring work being carried out by our members and candidates across the globe, we have now established the website, “Open Door Review of the Humanitarian Field”. This site is based on the initiative of Professor Marianne Leuzinger Bohleber’s highly regarded “Open Door Review of Outcome and Process Studies in Psychoanalysis”.

Our colleagues are making a difference in the world using their intuition, empathy, experience and understanding of psychoanalytic ideas with communities in need and with organisations that care for vulnerable people.

An important aim of our group is to foster relationships and develop networks between psychoanalysts workers in the humanitarian field and humanitarian organisations. We encourage the interchange of experiences within and outside the IPA and hope to promote the development of theories related to this work.

A significant number of individual IPA members and societies have developed interesting programs, within organisations, providing assistance to people in dire need.

We hope to create a global community that honours those who are doing this important work. To this end the IPA established the President’s Prize at the 2019 IPA conference in London for the best IPA applicant working in the community. The 2019 winning project of the President’s Prize was “Psicologos Contigo” or “Psychologists with you”, from Peru, a brilliant and inspiring project.

Following prize winners have been Ububele Baby Matt Project, South Africa, in 2021, Developing Psychodynamic Research in the area of Social Development, India, in 2025, Psychoanalysts Migrating to the Community: Psychoanalytic Interventions for Migrant Children and Adolescents in Uruguay.